Scientists Find 'Lost City' of Ancient Rock

July 11 -- More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote about asplendid city named Atlantis with fertile soil and glorious templesthat "in a single day and night of misfortune ... disappeared into the depths of the sea."

Now researchers probing the ocean bottom have found 18-story-high towers of stone — the tallest ever — near a section of volcanic fault ridges that extend for 6,200 miles along the Atlantic Ocean floor.

Inspired by the formations' majestic heights and by the fact that the stone towers appear on a seafloor mountain named Atlantis Massif, the scientists named the field of about two dozen stone structures The Lost City in honor of the fabled, flooded city.

Not only are the underwater stone spirals unusual in composition and their location, scientists think they may offer a glimpse into Earth's earliest environments when life began.

"It was clear these were unlike anything we'd ever seen before," says Deborah Kelley, an oceanographer at the University of Washington and one of three people who traveled to the newly discovered underworld in a submersible vessel.

A Mountain With Fingers

Scientists have found about 100 other underwater vent systems made up of clusters of mineral deposits around volcanic cracks in the ocean floor. Colonies of strange, primitive creatures, including blood-red tubeworms and large clams feed on nutrients leached by hot, dissolving gas from the vents.

But this network of stone is unique. Rather than forming directly around volcanic vents, the formations are about 9 miles from the cracks. The towers extend like groping fingers above Atlantis Massif, a submerged mountain about the size of Washington's Mt. Ranier.

As Jeff Karson, an oceanographer who explored the Lost City with Kelley remarked, "If this were on land, this would be a national park."

The Lost City is also strikingly bright — or as bright as things can appear under artificial light a half-mile below sea level.